Women Journalists in the Newsroom

A conversation about what’s changed and what needs to change

February 07, 2014
| By Caitlin Tucker

EVANSTON, Ill. --- Award-winning journalist and Newsweek magazine’s first female senior editor Lynn Povich will join former Newsweek writer Jesse Ellison Feb. 12 at Northwestern University to talk about women in journalism and in the workplace.

The conversation “Are We There Yet?” is free and open to the public and will take place from 5 to 6 p.m. in Room 311 of Fisk Hall, 1845 Sheridan Road, on the Evanston campus. A social hour will follow at the Indigo Lounge in the Orrington Hotel, 1710 Orrington Ave. The event is co-sponsored by the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications and the Journalism & Women Symposium.

According to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, only 36 percent of workers in the newsroom are women, a number that’s remained unchanged for more than a decade. Povich and Ellison will discuss these disparities and the importance of gender balance and diversity in the workplace.

Povich is the author of “The Good Girls Revolt,” a nonfiction account of 46 women at Newsweek who filed an EEOC complaint in 1970 against management for systematic discrimination in hiring and promotion. It also shows how young women today struggle to “get ahead.”

“It’s about solutions,” said event moderator Michele Weldon, assistant professor emerita of Medill and director of Medill Public Thought Leaders. “The event will celebrate the victories that have happened and discuss how to move forward in a positive way.”

Ellison, who now works as a freelance writer, will share her own experiences with gender-related issues as a younger journalist in a modern newsroom.

“If you have a newsroom that’s predominantly male, then the story ideas, source choices and way a story is presented will reflect that point of view,” said Weldon. “When that happens, you get a skewed view of the world and that’s not what the world is like.”